With development of communications services, a positioning service plays an important role as an indispensable part in mobile communications and personal communications services. In recent years, a continuously improving living standard also gradually increases a demand for location services. For example, there is a growing demand for positioning in scenarios such as security monitoring, emergency rescue, and travel guiding. Positioning information of user equipment (UE) is extremely important particularly in a special application scenario such as an emergency rescue scenario.
In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a network device or UE measures a reference signal used for positioning, and calculates a measurement result according to a positioning algorithm, to obtain location coordinates of the UE. The measurement result may include one or more of a field strength of the signal, a time difference of arrival of the signal, an angle of arrival of the signal, and the like.
In a current system, a network device or a positioning server receives a positioning request of UE, instructs the UE to report neighboring cell information to the network device or the positioning server, and selects, according to the reported neighboring cell information, a base station participating in positioning. In the positioning process, the network device or the positioning server needs to instruct, after receiving the positioning request, the UE to report the neighboring cell information, and in response to the instruction, the UE measures and reports the neighboring cell information to the network device or the positioning server. Consequently, because the network device or the positioning server cannot obtain the neighboring cell information in time, positioning is relatively slow, positioning efficiency is relatively low, and a requirement cannot be met in a scenario with a relatively urgent demand for positioning information.
Therefore, currently no effective solution is available for addressing the foregoing situation.